MANUCYTE Self-learning modular manufacturing platform for flexible, patient-specific cell production

Summary

Currently, personalised cell cultivation is only carried out through laboratory-scale manual processing. This makes the process highly dependent on human interaction, reducing accuracy and reproducibility. To overcome these issues and make the patient-specific cultivation of cells available for a wide range of applications, ManuCyte will develop this technology to boost the efficiency of personalised cell cultivation, with a view to quality, throughput and costs. Key SMEs and research institutes are at the root of the project consortium and will incorporate their specialisms in their respective fields into the ManuCyte project. Examples of these fields are: liquid handling; cell imaging; cell culturing; software development and automation. According to project manager Ursula Rauschecker, it is only this close cooperation between organisations operating in different sectors and these various companies pooling their technologies which enable such multidisciplinary projects to get off the ground and be carried through to successful completion. This objective will be obtained by combining several advanced technologies, such as: • A modular and scalable plug-in concept for the setup of cell production platforms. • Cleanroom and sterilisation policies to keep cell cultures free from the risk of cross-contamination. • A micro-fluidic component which provides cell culture medium specifically customised for each cell culture. • Bioreactors capable of highly automated processes, as well as the associated incubation component. • Inline monitoring (monitoring while the process is ongoing) to enable the evaluation of cell status within the production process through optical and biochemical measurement. • MES (Manufacturing Execution System) with LIMS (Laboratory Information and Management System) functionalities for control of the automation platform, including a self-learning knowledge-based cell behaviour model and advanced cell process control functionalities for self-optimisation of cell cultivation processes.

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More information & hyperlinks

Web resources:	http://www.manucyte-project.eu https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/260100
Start date:	01-05-2010
End date:	30-04-2013
Total budget - Public funding:	4 534 239,00 Euro - 3 435 700,00 Euro

Cordis data

Original description

Personalized medicine (e.g. regenerative, such as cell therapy or patient-specific tested and composed pharmaceuticals) has huge potential. But to exploit this potential, it is necessary to produce human cells patient-specific in industrial scale. Nowadays, personalized cell production is only executed by means of manual processing on laboratory scale. In Order to make patient-specific production of cells available for a wide range of applications, CytoFab focuses on the development of an intelligent, modular manufacturing platform for flexible, patient-specific cell production which will increase efficiency of personalised cell production in quality and throughput. This objective will be reached by combining several high-sophisticated technologies such as a modular and scalable plug-in concept for the setup of cell production platforms, the application of a cleanroom and sterilisation concept to keep cell cultures cross-contamination free, a micro-fluidic component for customized cell culture medium composition, inline monitoring methodologies to enable the evaluation of cell status within the production process, and a manufacturing execution system which includes a self-learning knowledge-based cell behaviour and advanced cell process control fuctionalities for self-optimization of cell production processes. The latter is needed due to the individual nature of cells which makes it impossible, to process each cell with the same parameters without considerable variations in quality. With this high grade innovations, CytoFab will set a new standard in automated manufacturing technologies for personalized medicine applications.